my observance
by shmonzie
Summary: a next door neighbour italics views hermione as hermione writes indent and thinks about herself, her life... and draco


Indigent (someone who is very poor)

Abhor

Desolate

Laconic (brief/to the point)

Impetus

Tacit

Anomalous (irregular)

Unmitigated shock

Everything I think about pertains to her

Coalesced (united)

Pedagogic

Gesticulating vehemently

Charlatan (impostor)

**_The Effect of the Intrepid /Stout-Hearted Sex_**

_**(which adjective is better?)**_

No more could be said on her part, she merely stared down at her feet and feigned interest in her shoes, biting the inside of her lip to prevent herself from crying. She did not want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her in pain, the pain that he would of course know that he inflicted. He had said her name and she loved the way it sounded, leaving his lips. She knew that she could no longer avoid his staring eyes, he expected her to look up, to face him, and she wasn't sure what her expression would be like when she did.

She raised her eyes up to look at him and blinked a few times allowing the tears that had welled in her eyes to roll slowly down her cheeks. Her big green eyes were glassy, and her face now glistened where the tears had made their paths. "So this is what it feels like to have your heart broken", she mused.

"She loved the way it sounded, leaving his lips" Corny, pathetic, "So this is what it feels like to have your heart broken" routine, overdone. No one could or even would ever take my writing seriously; I don't even take it seriously! It's difficult to read my own narrative without laughing at how clichéd it sounds. It's irrelevant whether the emotion is real or manufactured; my writing is "simplistic" "superficial" "lacks depth". I want my writing to be impressive yet I want it to reflect me, to be a product of myself and for any reader who knows me to be able to find me within my writing.

To say "Dear Diary" would be again unoriginal, but how else am I to express to whom I am talking? You see, dearest diary, I write because I find it to be the only way in which I can express myself, to analyse how I truly feel and to gain a better understanding within myself. I scare myself sometimes, diary, my writing isn't always a clear and straight reflection. My mirror of words is warped and distorted. I lose the boundaries of fiction and reality and find myself writing simply of a girl. A girl whose emotions and thoughts reflect that of my own, but whose actions frighten and confuse me. Diary, who is this girl?

He wasn't tall and wasn't tanned, but he had the bluest eyes that just pierced right through a person. The kind of eyes that when you looked at them, it was as if they looked back at you, and right into your soul. It was his eyes that first drew her to him and that is when she found that she was indeed in love with the boy.

"What?" She mumbled as she fumbled with the keys in her left pocket. By turning each key over in her hand, she thought that she could prevent herself from overanalysing this situation and breaking down, overcome by her emotions as he stared expectantly at her, awaiting her response. It was a simple question really; one that required the bare minimum of thought but her wandering mind delayed her response as the answers to questions she'd rather hear crashed over one another like salt water waves in her mind, holding her under them for far too long.

_She's interesting; a girl like none I have ever met before, of course, it is not like I have really met her at all. For some unexplained reason, I feel drawn to observing her and each day I peel myself away from the desk by my window with the greatest of difficultly. She sits across the small street, in her home, within the four close walls of her bedroom and I watch her with the greatest of curiosity. A soul I have never met, yet can somehow write so much about. She always overanalysed, it was a trait she couldn't control. She hated the nights that she spent lying in her bed gazing emptily at an arbitrary and irrelevant point. Soon the point would be lost from focus as her mind wandered over past She recreated the times in her mind and picked them apart, slowly driving herself crazy with regret and indecision._

She felt his cold, rough, calloused palm connect with her cheek and her eyes glazed over with the thin film of tears, ready to leak. The tears, they were so familiar now, the constant within her unbalanced life. The usual look of pain was present now, not only physical from the sting on her face, but deeply emotional. However, there was something else in that look, something that wasn't there the last time he slapped her. It was a sharp and stabling glare of anger, of hatred. This was the last time she would let him do it. The last time she would let him manipulate her feelings and take control of her as if she was some object for amusement and entertainment, an object he could pick up when he was bored and throw high into the air, before walking away. Letting the object begin its descent to the ground, awaiting its obvious destruction that would occur as it made contact with obvious force. Then he would return, with only the smallest fraction of time to spare, and catch the object only moments before it was set to shatter. He caught it effortlessly. Did he even care if it dropped and shattered? If **she **dropped and shattered? She wouldn't let him do it to her again. She wouldn't let herself experience those feelings of absolute meaninglessness again; the descent to the ground was more painful that the impact of the crash could ever be. She was to be immured no longer.

_**I am strong **_

**_I am weak_**

_**I am Perverse**_

I write, possibly because I know no other way in which I am able to express how I feel, what I'm thinking. When I attempt to word my thoughts and feelings in an effort to convey to another just what is plaguing my mind, the words never form and if they do, I feel foolish and begin to feel a blush rise on my cheeks. However, if I am alone, and I am writing, the words flow out of me as if they were destined to be scripted on paper. No one can ever read what I write. I would be positively mortified if they ever came across my writing as it truly does bare my soul. The embarrassment would be far too great for me to handle. As I say this I smile as language itself seems to amuse me. "For me to handle", "for me to bare" "bare" "exposed". I find that these words seem to link together, to fit and become cyclical.

If I ever appear strong, it is a façade, a mask, for I am not strong. Someone strong would not be afraid to live impulsively and to act upon mere desire and whim. No, I am not strong and will possibly never _be_ strong. I am indecisive and analytical. I overanalyse and am scrupulous with any decision that I do eventually come to make. I never do anything worthwhile. Even if my actions seem worthwhile at the time, in hindsight, they never are. These thoughts, they run through my mind, creating obvious confusion, palpable doubt. Who am I to be so certain now, when I never have been before? Why bother to continue to write if my writing is indeed how I perceive it to be, utterly worthless? But why bother stopping if there is never harm in continuing?

As I write, my writing I already know is useless. I should have stopped; no one will ever read this piece of writing. I am grateful for that, for if they did, it would shame me to no end. If my writing is useless simply because no other will chance to read it, and I am glad that no other will, am I not in essence, arguing a simplistic and futile point against myself? This being the case, I have excellent argumentative skills. It's humorous really, me complimenting myself in such a way. I do it so rarely, and never in public, yet here it is:

…a compliment.

Humourous really, that my argumentative skills are _so_ grand that they allow me the ability to argue against myself, against my own opinions and beliefs. I have just stated that this piece of writing is useless as no one will ever read it. However, my argumentative skill allows me to see the opposing side of this small debate and illuminate the possibility that my piece of writing is not useless. It provides me with an escape from reality and endows me with a chance to analyse myself and be open and honest, even if it is merely with a piece of paper. Nevertheless, it may not be my argumentative and debating skills that allow me to see and appreciate this new light, but rather my indecisiveness that permits me to change my very opinion.

Disconcerting really.

_**Playing God**_

_The more I observe her, the more captivated I become. I feel as if I know this girl, yet we have never uttered a single word to one another. In truth, I do not know the first thing about her, not one aspect that I can ascertain as fact. What I write, I establish from my observances and as much as I try to prevent it, my mind runs with this very limited information as I create who I perceive the girl next door to be. _

_I sit still and I watch her, she plunged into the pool, allowing the clear water to engulf her body, feet first and lastly, her head. Her hair was floating angelically around her face as she used her arms to push the water away and propel herself towards the pool floor. She slid her open palms across the floor's surface feeling its coarseness_

Suddenly, she felt her right hand fall through the floor, fall and slide beneath it somehow. She withdrew her hand with haste and squinted, looking closely at it, ensuring it was not damaged. Not that it mattered really. It was silliness and the idiocy of the human psyche. Checking the condition of her hand was as pointless as sterilising the needle used for lethal injections.

Despite the time she had spent underwater, the lack of oxygen in her body was not having any effect on her. This new discovery of something beyond and below the solid ground she knew, enabled her to remain conscious despite the lack of air in her lungs. Then again, even with all the uncertainties in her life, a pool's solid floor was never one of them. Was she even still conscious, and if so, was it wise to attempt a rediscovery, to delve into the unknown and to risk being lost below the base of her own swimming pool? Her disregard for her own life allowed her to make the rash decision: she would explore what unexplainably lay beneath the pool's floor. Once again, she ran her palms across the pool's base, anxious with the anticipation of finding the spot where her hand would disappear. For another seven minutes, she continued her losing pursuit for the unsteady floor. Filled with exasperation, she decided to give up and considered the mysterious void to be a figment of her imagination. At this point, she realised just how long she had spent underwater and wondered why it was that she had not run out of air. Shaking these ineffectual thoughts from her mind, she placed her foot on the pool's floor and kicked off to return to the water's surface. Instead of propelling upwards, she felt a sharp tug downwards, on the base of her foot and then on her ankle. Before she had time to question what was happening or to scream in panic, her entire body was sucked through a portal in the base of her very own swimming pool; the vessel in which she had planned to end her own life.

Ironic really, a protagonist wishes to end her own life but then panics at the thought of being taken from a world she yearned to leave. And what will happen next to my nameless character? I've established an introduction as powerful or weak as you may perceive it to be, but what is this otherworld, is there another world and what will become of my suicidal and questioning individual? There are far too many options, too many different stories that can take place from this point and to continue my writing may eventuate in failing to entertain my reader. Perhaps my reader has some faint idea of where he or she wishes the protagonist to have departed to. If my story does not continue in the manner they have foreseen, I will have disappointed my reader and therefore failed as an author.

But am I an author? My writing has never been published nor has it been read by a single soul, bar myself. To consider myself an author is far too kind, thoroughly unrealistic and overly pretentious.

_**Ghost-writer **_

_She tripped and fell forward, while her palms physically made contact__ with the ground, metaphorically, her needs, too, hit the dirt floor as her books scattered out of her arms and onto the ground around her. "Writer", said the boy gazing down at her, "Maybe you should get your head out of your stories every so often and actually live life". She glanced down at her dirt stained knees and thought about what the boy had said. He went to the same school; it wasn't such a big school. He was even in some of her classes and they were tiny classes. Yet he didn't even know her name. She was too busy writing about the people around her to actually meet them. The boy was right; she was too preoccupied writing her life to have a chance to live it and that in itself was pitiful. _

I am 17, isn't that a little late to completely revamp and reinvent myself; to introduce myself under an entirely new persona to classmates that I have attended school with for the last five years? These people have observed me over these past years and have categorised me, placed me in my marked box and not thought twice about me or my placement since then. I am "the writer", that's what I am seen as, all I am seen as. How on Earth am I now, five years later, going to change that?

She walked forward through the open gates and into her school, a school she knew so well. Her attire was questionable and she was just lucky that her parents had left for work early in the morning and were not given the chance to see the garments, or lack of such, in which she had left the house that morning. High-heeled, black, knee high leather boots, a frayed dark denim mini skirt and a black singlet that scooped down rather low in the front and didn't quite reach the top of her skirt. Her hair was loose and fell around her shoulders as she swept her fingers across her scalp to push it out of her face. Had this outfit not been assembled by her, the word "slut" would have been screamed in her head as she rolled her eyes at the promiscuous and licentious teenager dressed so scantily. But no, this was her, at least for today.

She walked up the hill past the various groups of students who, to her great joy, all turned to look at her. There were assorted whispers of "who's that?" "What school did _she_ come from?" "I wonder what year she's in" Then she heard one girl whisper and it seemed to ring out some decibels louder than all other comments and rung in her ears for a few seconds longer, "Oh my god, I thought she was smarter than that, what a whore!" The comment had come from one of the girls in her writing class, the girl she had sat next to all semester. Her confidence, that she had managed to hold for all of the three minutes that she had been within the school walls, was slashed. Once again, she was 'the smart one' and nothing more than that. For someone that was supposedly so smart, she felt foolish at the thought that a new outfit could change the way people saw her. 8:00 am, that meant another seven and a half hours of being confined within these school walls, incarcerated.

No, of course no one has read anything like this ever before, "High-heeled, black, knee high leather boots" … it's one hundred percent original and creative! Does my writer's tone not drip with sarcasm? This is the story that everyone has seen one thousand times. You could reside under a rock, inside of a bubble and in the midst of a forest and still have heard this story or one that closely resembles it a minimum of a dozen times. I must find my creativity, a unique story that has never been written before and resembles nothing else.

_Days? Weeks? Months? How long has it truly been since I began to observe this stranger next door? I find it so hard to remember now as it does not feel so long ago that I first laid eyes on the curious creature, yet right now, I feel as if I know her better than I know myself. Despite this notion, perhaps she is nothing like the person I imagine her to be. I drew my eyes away from her open window recently, I forced myself to take a quick yet detailed glace over the rest of her house in an effort to learn more about the curious persona. She was Jewish; I determined this from the Mezuzah__ attached to the corner of her front door. This new knowledge baffled me as I knew that electricity was indeed used in her house on the Jewish Sabbath. Perhaps not all Jews abide by this law. _

_She stood up from her desk and threw her note book across the carpeted floor of her bedroom. She then glared at it, her stare menacing and filled with hatred and frustration. Then suddenly she was morose as a wave of despondency washed over her. Her body crumpled to the ground where she found herself sitting cross-legged and facing her floor-length mirror. She lacked the energy to scream or to even pick herself back up off the floor. As she stared into her mirrored reflection, her body began to shake as the tears slowly welled in her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. It was hopeless, it was useless and she knew that but could not find a way out._

_She turned her head to look at the old clock that now lay broken on the floor. It had fallen with the impact of the notebook hitting the bookshelf it sat upon. The clock belonged to her great grandmother. It was a tacky piece really. It reflected her great grand mother in that way; the tacky jewellery she used to wear, the tacky way in which she over-applied her lipstick and that tacky way she wore her old stockings, even if they had runs in them. Despite all this, she was a woman to be respected; a strong woman. This woman had lived through one of the most dangerous times in the history of a Jew__. She had seen the internal walls of a death camp, the faces of those who perished at Nazi hands and worn the clothes of a working prisoner. She had survived. It takes a strong woman to master that; a woman of courage. _

_Her face was still damp from her previous tears, but she reglazed it in a fresh coat. The emotion of regret, having never spent the time with her great grandmother to hear her story, overcame her. It was not a rare occurrence, being overcome with emotion. In all honesty, she would cry at the drop of a thumb-tack, the tip of a hat. Do not let this fool you, she was no weak being. Her inner strength came as an inherited quality, along with her piercing green eyes; the eyes that looked so beautiful, glassed over with tears. _

_Nine minutes had passed and for a girl as efficient as she, this was an adequate amount of time. A time in which she could complete math homework, cover half the block with her dog on a leash and read a chapter of an enticing book. She had done none of these things in the past nine minutes and was mentally berating herself for the time wasted, once again shedding useless tears and staring at her own reflection. With a swift swipe of her hand under her eyes to be rid of the loose tears, she stood from her place on the floor and continued with her life as if these past nine minutes were nothing at all_

They are nothing. They mean nothing. They are not who I am, or who I want to be and will not be remembered as who I was. The tears that dampen the carpet are insignificant in the scheme of life and the blood that drips from wrists to white tiles, before being washed down the drain is merely a reflection of myself as a nonentity…

_**Regenesis:**_

She lifts her head

Eyes brimming

tears spilling

Sighs,

Closes eyes

Gaze falls downwards

Don't understand

Never will, never can

Intrinsic emotions.

Mind wanders,

starts to run

Faster now, no need for stopping

Feet immersed

Then waist, shoulders, neck.

Shivering now,

Movements unsure

Need to continue;

Desperation.

Water envelops

Swathes, wraps

Cool, harsh warmth

Sense of floating;

Flying, soaring

Invincible, impregnable.

Mind rushes

Blackness, void

Endless abyss

No tear

No smile

Nonentity.

Gentle hand

Single white light

Unmitigated soul

Digress from black

See blue, yellow, red

Now green, orange

So real.

Pristine existence

Salvaged from ruins

Do away with old

New beginnings.

Eyes blink open

Cheeks stained but dry

Lift head.

Glance cautiously, carefully

Head high,

Body weak

Uncertainty.

Soft footsteps

Small smile

Vigilantly forward.

Fugacious thought

_**Fragility**_

**life**   
_n._ _pl._ **lives **(lvz)

The interval of time between birth and death:

All life must come to an end. Who am I to play God? Who am I to determine when my end should be? I must not be so self-righteous in my thoughts, so supercilious.

_She was forever correcting herself, analysing herself and finding fault within herself. She was female. She was a teenager. She was human. I can describe her in this way, even more so, my description is accurate yet from this description, we still know nothing real about her. _

**hu·man**

_n._

Subject to or indicative of the weaknesses, imperfections, and fragility associated with humans

So, to be human is to be imperfect, to be weak; to be fragile. Fragile is an understatement. Fragile is the brandy balloon you hold, its glass; paper thin and forever threatening to shatter under the hand's touch. I am not fragile; I am not even what you would call delicate. When you say delicate you think of embroidery or those patients in a mental institution, their minds so delicate that the smallest thing could set them off and destroy them. Then again, perhaps I am delicate.

Perhaps that is the correct word, the best word to be used in describing what or who I am. The slightest look can send me into a fresh wave of tears; a number on my page can provoke anger within me and the feeling of disappointment. I walk into my room at sit at my computer, I closed both doors to my bedroom on the way in and as I begin to type, I am consumed within my writing. Then the noise from the next room heaves me from my thoughts, my concentration. Suddenly, I am angry, frustrated… to such an extent that I want to break things, to smash things and to bite down so hard that my teeth shatter from the pressure.

All of this, from a slight movement in the next room.

**_Ignorance Irrelevance is Bliss_**

_Her peers, the people she felt knew her best … people who did not really know her at all. As she stood before them, looking at their familiar faces she realised that each one of these faces was staring back expectantly at her. She had never had an issue with public speaking before, but today was different. Not different in the sense that something phenomenal or catastrophic had occurred and made some great alteration…but just different. I watch her from my seat towards the back of the room. Yes, it is her, the girl through the window. Peculiar really, that even in a completely different environment, I can still only observe her from that same distance away. _

As long as it just my speech they are hearing; I am fine, I am safe. It just cannot be my thoughts that they hear; my desires or my fears. I can talk about Macbeth or King Lear till I bore them to death, about Shakespeare or Atwood till they can stand it no longer, and about journeys and changing perspectives till they scream and they yell. I have the ability to talk and to lecture on any of these subjects… but to speak from my heart… to expose my thoughts and express my fears is something I can never do. Not to these people I call my friends, not to family, my teachers or even trained professionals; the professionals qualified to help. If I say it aloud, it is real and I am vulnerable. I cannot retract it or deny it any longer, I am susceptible to the taunts, and to the endless questions … the questions I myself am not even sure of how to answer.

So I talk about these irrelevant issues. I am sure they interest some, heck sometimes they even interest me, but it is a false world. A facade for the real world… Merely a pretence - Why does no one say what they truly think, they never voice the words truly streaming through their mind, plaguing their consciousness. Occasionally, we

Slip.

"I don't know what to do anymore, every time I'm at home; I bicker with my parents, usually over tedious and insignificant issues. I don't confront them. Instead, I sit in my room and I cry to myself. It's becoming ridiculous now, I feel as if I'm slipping into a state of depression. I haven't spoken to anyone about this before and I'm telling you because you're my closest friend and I trust you. I know how loquacious you are, but I also know how loyal you are. You're my rock and I base my attitude on you sometimes. I haven't told you that before, but I admire you, your determination and the way you seem to have your priorities in order. I wish that I had that and I know that it's reachable, but sometimes I just feel so powerless." I looked at my friend and smiled awkwardly. She had just spent the last three minutes pouring out her innermost thoughts and feelings to me and I was at a loss for words. Despite how vulnerable she had just made herself, I could not put myself in the same position. I could not tell her that I had experienced everything she had just mentioned and that I completely understood and could empathise with her. In that one speech of hers, she had said some of the most awkward things ever confessed. She expected something profound from me in a response; some great piece of knowledge that I could pass onto her that would vanquish her problems. Her eyes, cerulean and iridescent, always gave her away. Her growing tenseness with anticipation was evident. I had nothing profound to tell her; nothing blatantly honest to divulge. I smiled awkwardly.

_**The Cosmos of the Confused**_

Mirror Mirror on the wall, who am I?

I received no answer to my question of desperation. I crave to know who I am, who I'm meant to be. I stare into my own reflection, begging for it to stop mimicking me and to relieve me of my dissatisfaction. I stare deeper into the eyes of my own reflection, almost daring it to answer me, to stop being a reflection for a short moment in time.

If it was to stop being a reflection, in essence, it would change what it was,

Is that not what I want to do? To change what I am? Who I am?

How very metaphorical of me.

_Without even uttering a word to her, merely by my observances that were slowly becoming an evening ritual, I was learning more about the peculiar stranger who lived so close, but existed in a place so far away. She was an isolated person, one who physically stood among others, but internally knew that she stood alone. She stood alone in her confusion and remained alone in her quest for something more. She sliced her own wrists and having realised the implications of her actions, bandaged them on her own. Looking down now she could see that her bandages were thoroughly imbued with blood. The gashes must have been deeper than intended._

They say that those who commit suicide are crying out for help. I don't believe this. Why would one that wants help, end their own life? Is it not then too late for the help that is so desperately craved? They say that those who commit suicide are seeking attention. Once again, I disagree as if you end your life, you will not witness the attention you seek, and your actions would have been futile. So I gash my wrists, not to end my life but to make it appear as if this was my attention. I will reap the rewards of my actions. I will receive the attention I crave.

**Life is short**

Bullshit.

Life is the goddamn longest thing we will ever do. Receiving your education takes up a large period of time within your life, life is still longer. No matter what you do, whatever feels like it has consumed endless amounts of your time … life is still longer. Whenever your life ends, there is no more that you will see; nothing longer that you will witness. So how can someone make so ignorant a statement as "Life is short" when living is the longest thing we will ever do. Those clichéd statements never cease to amaze me with their obvious stupidity displaying the ignorance of their speaker, a speaker who believes himself to be a wise one.

The human race believes itself to be superior. When the films or television programs we watch challenge this idea; depicting our entire universe existing within a train station locker or a marble, we smile at the intelligence of the idea and then dismiss it from thought. What if our universe was really that insignificant within the rest of existence? We would never know for sure and this lack of knowledge would depress us; so instead of accepting the fact that we may, in reality, be that small, we discard the idea with a smile and shrug off the possibility of our diminutive size and consequent unimportance. In fact, we even take it to such an extreme that we murder those with "radical" thoughts, which persist that our existence is not all there is. Socrates was murdered for "corrupting the youth". By doing away with those that disagree with the majority of the population, we display our naivety as a race.

What if our entire perception is incorrect? The scientists of our time, and times before us, and no doubt, the times to follow us, dedicate their lives to curing the diseases that plague our existence. What if their work is futile, their cause: destructive? There exists the possibility that the diseases we aim to cure, the cancers, the aids and the diabetes of our generation, are in fact not the diseases we perceive them to be, but rather the antithesis…the cure. As we discover medication to treat viruses, a new virus becomes known to us, immune to our medication, the cure no longer effective as a new disease is discovered. We perceive this to be the disease being cured, but in reality, it is really a new cure being created by the world that is not immune to the previous disease. When mankind invent cures, they are really creating a new disease to plague the world and when mankind is plagued with a new disease, it is the world fighting back with a newer and stronger dose of medication. In essence, we are the disease.

_There exists so many areas and aspects of my girl next door that I know nothing of. But right now, I know she, who is so unsure of herself, finds solace in questioning her very reality; the mankind to who she belongs. If she can find that mankind exists amidst confusion, then she herself can be content amongst confusion and find belonging. _

_**Her Eyes Were Green**_

I find it most difficult to gather my thoughts, to arrange them and file them in some categorical, alphabetical or sequential order - some order that makes sense in reflection. I perceive it to be an impossible task. How do we differentiate between our thoughts, to find the boundary between one thought and the next? Our thoughts are our journeys: individual yet linked, with blurred beginnings and endings - bordering on impossible to define.

_Plato, the student of Socrates, documented for the great philosopher, who knew nothing, but that he knew nothing. Most famous of Plato's text was his cave allegory, questioning society as it was then known. Each text or piece of writing, each film we view or song we hear affects us, it teaches us something about the writer, the world, or perhaps even ourselves. It provokes thought perhaps without us realising it and through doing so, instils us with an altered perception, either challenging or confirming the original thought. I believe that she would have taken this into account and applied it to the thoughts that had plagued her mind for years._

Just as he who exited the cave could not explain to those still trapped facing the wall the things he saw outside, one cannot explain the colours we see. How am I to know that what I see as red is in fact what another sees as red? I have no way of explaining the colour "red" to those around me. My "red" may be the colour of most leaves, the colour I know as "green". We are all aware that Snow White's apple was red, but how am I meant to know if the colour I see in my mind when told to picture "red", the colour I can point to and say, "this is red" is the same colour you see?. Even if we both recognise the object by the same named colour, the colours we actually see may be entirely different. It can never be proved that when we stand together to observe a sunset, that the sunset I see is that same that you do, it is just that we associate the same words with the colours or even an object before us.

Thinking thoughts as such makes the ideas swirl around in the endless abyss that is my mind. They make perfect sense within my body's attic, yet when I attempt to elucidate my thoughts to others, the English words come out a jumbled mess, making my thoughts entirely incoherent. As I attempt to write these words upon paper, I find myself stumbling as I struggle to type them in the correct order, structuring my sentence in such a way that when read back, the thoughts flow in the correct sequential order and accurately convey what I mean.

_**I know you, who are you?**_

She pressed her lips together, casting a perfunctory glance at her reflection in the mirror before making her way out of her bedroom door. The girl that faced her in the mirror was most definitely herself; it was the image she associated with herself, even though it had been so long since she truly looked at her own face or body. Usually, she would face her reflection and proceed with whatever she was doing that required her to use a mirror; whether it be the application of make up, washing her face or brushing her teeth. She barely ever took the time to scrutinise her own reflection, exploring her own image, paying close attention to her individual features. Suddenly, she came to realise that she did not know what she looked like…really looked like. She could recognise herself in a photograph or a film of course, but had never taken in her image as one does when meeting someone for the very first time. She did not know if she was attractive or which of her features were the most striking. In fact, she had no idea what others saw when they looked at her. Now that she had begun with these thoughts about appearance and recognition, she could not help but take them further. Her friends, her family… she had never truly looked at these people, seen their faces. She glanced at them and in her mind; they were registered and recognised by their names and backgrounds. However, their facial features were completely foreign. As she stared into the faces of those she knew, she saw them once again as strangers and suddenly, before her eyes, these familiar people suddenly became alien to look at.

I think myself a genius at these momentary epiphanies I have, but then I'll pick up a bestselling novel and find my ideas, my very own thought up concepts, explained perfectly and in much detail within the narrative of this novel. My new found ideas are suddenly besmirched, having existed prior to my knowledge and having been coined by someone other than myself.

_Taking in her facial features as I studied this stranger through our open windows, I knew that she faced great confusion and experienced much pain. How long had passed now since I began my observances? This I cannot know and in a way, I am glad. The time I spend watching my stranger is a time during which I feel myself taken voluntarily away from reality. No one knows I watch her, she is my secret. I barely know her, she is a secret_

_**Remnants of the long forgotton**_

_Once more observing the pained looked that so frequently crossed her face, I knew the frustration she experienced as she could never explain what she was truly thinking, the thoughts that constantly plagued her mind, she could not convey these to any of her friends and even less so to her family. They would consider them puerile and pointless. She herself knew this already, but the subconscious is a hard force to control._

She ran her fingers over the shiny flat surface, feeling the smooth cold steel beneath her fingers. She then drew a finger down the edge, testing it for sharpness and smiling sadistically/masochistically as a small drop of crimson blood appeared on her pale pink fingertip. She traced the heart softly in a circular motion with her blood stained finger and then once again took the handle into her hand and wrapped her fingers around it delicately before steadily and viciously plunging it into the heart three times before letting the knife drop to the floor, listening intently, as the thud that sounded as it hit the floor boards resonated off the walls and around the room.

I hate dolls.

- Ridiculously manufactured plastic perfect faces. Proportions that would have them walking on all fours had they been real people. They were the symbols of perfection, of a perfection you can only dream of amounting to. They were the remnants of a childhood long forgotten, long ago replaced with technology and thick books. Why should I bother keeping these leftovers? What could I possibly achieve? I am no longer who I was when I played with these perfect dolls, I am not even who I was a year ago, my changes are frequent now as I struggle, wresting to find out who I am.

_**Final Freedom**_

He stood at the crossroads of two streets, craning his neck to see past the corner buildings and down the alleyways on either side. Breathing heavily, he leant forward, pressing his weight into his hands and leaning on his knees as he attempted to steady his heart rate. The streams of morning sunlight were just appearing over the tops of the skyscrapers and he knew that the more time that he allowed to pass, the harder she would be to track. She had the vital information; the information with which she could ruin him and without even realising it, destroy herself at the same time. Without further hesitation, he took off in a run down the path to his right. They thought alike, which made sensing her movements and decisions all the more easy. Or did it? Had she predetermined his knowingness of her tendency to veer right at intersections and intentionally turned left to outsmart him? Now he had confused himself and time was indeed running out. He glanced at his watch which showed the larger hand pointing to IX and the smaller hand pausing as it crept up towards the VI. He had to store his watch in his pocket as the brown leather band he usually fastened around his wrist was sliced in his last encounter with her. He couldn't believe he had let her escape; it was not the first time and as long as time didn't run out before he reached her, it would not be the last.

Now, this gripping story interests me. I feel compelled to read further and to find out more about these two mystery characters: Who are they? What will happen when time runs out? Why did the chase begin? These stories have a plot, they have substance and crises. These stories progress and they will end. She may be his sister or his lover. Perhaps in a riveting twist, she is his estranged daughter. Conversely, she may be a complete stranger; this may all take place in reality or perhaps within a game or even a dream. After all, this is only one excerpt from the story.

Even if this were my narrative, it still lacks a function. I cannot write to merely entertain. No, there must be a deeper motive, a stronger purpose. Perhaps my writing is boring. It is conceivable that my narrative does not appeal to you. I do not care. I write not for you, dear diary, but for myself. With my own selfish interests as my cause for lettering this page, I have freedom to write how I please; on the subjects that strike my fancy at any particular time. I do not need to be concerned with those I offend or those I confuse. In my writing, my intended audience is myself or those that wish to understand me. My intended purpose, yes dear diary I have discovered one, is to convey my thoughts on paper after all. I may break into the nature of speculative fiction and border on things fantastical, I might write of horror or thrills, I can even possibly write of romance and sorrow. There are no limits, no bounds to my writing. In my writing, I am free.

_**Epilogue**_

_She's different. I, who barely know the stranger next door, can see this. During my last two observances of her, I have watched an entirely different person to the one I have become accustomed to viewing. I do not know what changed; whether it was something physical or something within her, but she is not the girl she was and if I am to see this, I am certain that those who she converses with are aware of it. She looks far more approachable, someone that exists on this plane and not within that tiny book that I never see her without. In fact, where is that book now? I can no longer see it with her. I have realised now that this may be the end of my observances of her and in a way, I am sad. This girl I seem to have obsessed on for a substantial period of time now has changed so quickly that I missed it entirely, and now, she is gone. Sadness washes over me now as I realise how dependant I have been in watching the stranger next door. In a way, watching the distraught teenager has given me a greater perspective on my own life. That is to be no longer. _

_I take one more glance through my open window and into hers, I know now that it may as well be my last as there will be nothing more to watch. As I look up and into her room, something occurs that has never happened in all this time. She looks up and right back at me. I smile nervously, suddenly feeling foolish at all this time I have spent spying on my stranger. No, she is not angry that I seem to be studying her. Instead, she smiles back at me. I have never, in all my observances, witnessed her smile. Impulsively, I smile back. She is no longer a stranger._


End file.
